


Keeping Watch

by SectoBoss



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Dreamworld, Gen, Golems, Magic, Trolls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 23:38:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4938328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SectoBoss/pseuds/SectoBoss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a troll tries to use the dreamworld to ambush Tuuri, it quickly learns that it’s bitten off far more than it can chew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping Watch

There are six in that iron monster, and five are out of this one’s reach. 

The sixth, though? That’s a different story. 

The creature twists and coils, slowly, softly, pushing through the night towards the silent bulk of the machine that carries its prey. It recognises the defences and sensors this thing carries. It was here ten years ago, when a hundred machines like this one scoured the lands until the giants marched against them. It knows how to sneak up undetected by those electronic eyes. 

For days it has watched them come and go, followed them through snow and sleet from nest to nest. It knows them all by sight and smell – both in this world, and the other. Three have no presence in that place across the veil. Two walk that world as much as they do this one, and they are too strong for this creature to take. But the sixth? The one who sits at the controls of the machine, who speaks for them all? She has a touch of the other about her, and the creature senses she doesn’t even know it. It has caught whiff of her, in the dreams. She is its way in. 

So close that it could reach out and touch the metal hide of the machine – for all the good that would do, steel is a strong enough barrier against this little gobbet of meat and mind – it curls up, closes its eyes, and begins to dream. 

 

* * *

 

Her kinsman sets up strong barriers around his resting place, and the faraway mage roams so much it is impossible to track him down. Good defences, both. The woman has no such protection. 

The barrier is rent with barely an effort and the creature steps inside, cloven feet and webbed claws padding across soft grass. It looks around, scanning intently with beady eyes. A forest glade, shafts of sunlight slanting through tall evergreens, ferns and leaf litter flooding the rich black soil. The burble of running water reaches the many ears of the creature and it follows it, picking its way carefully over rotting logs festooned with colourful fungi. Find the water, find the soul. It’s the rule of these places. 

There! A large, flat, mossy rock in the middle of a tumbling stream, white-flecked water rushing past on both sides and giving the illusion that the rock is hurtling upstream. And on that rock, snoring softly, clad in the traditional dress of her people, she lies. Fast asleep. She has probably never seen this place, the creature realises – she does not have enough power to wake. 

_A shame. It’s rather beautiful,_ some distant, sorrowful part of its mind thinks to itself, and is immediately quashed. Jaws loll open, hungry. 

It goes to take a step forward, to cross the sliver of water and take what it came here for, when it stops, confused. Looks down. One of its feet is tangled on a fern that has wrapped itself around its hoof. The creature snorts in annoyance, rips the fern from the ground, takes a step, goes to take another- 

And stops again. More ferns, uncurling from the ground like fingers, wave around blindly and grasp at its feet. Their grip is impossibly strong. _What is this?_ The creature tugs and strains against these sudden bonds but it is stuck fast. It snorts again, this time in anger and frustration. 

Something akin to fear crawls up its spines as it begins to sense that it might not just be the two of them in this place. Around it, the trees seem to close in, even though they do not move – _cannot move_ – and it would swear the warm sun becomes cold and dim. 

From the water ahead of it, a hand emerges. The creature looks on in shock. It is joined by another, then arms, shoulders, a back, a head, legs, and before its eyes a crude facsimile of a man, a golem of water and foam, hauls itself up out of the water and stands on the river bank. 

A few metres away, another one emerges. And another, and another. 

A rustling from the leaf litter. The creature spins its heads around as much as the ferns will allow it, to see another humanoid figure building itself out of a swirling mass of dead leaves. It stamps forward on deadwood bones, muscles of fungi and moss bunching and clenching beneath a leafy skin. The ground beneath the creature’s feet softens and it begins to sink, the rich wet earth beneath sucking it down hungrily. Panic, hot and raw, starts to churn in its breast. It bellows and heaves, trying desperately to free itself. 

_What is this what is this how can she do this-  
_

Soil and clay spray upwards and a monster of stone claws its way to the surface, a hulking behemoth of granite and slate, the bedrock itself rising up against the intruder. 

Heat hazes spin and whirl, and the creature is confused until it realises that it is not heat that is distorting the air but the air itself, animated pockets spinning this way and that, vacuum and overpressure dancing their twin dance. 

These defenders encircle the creature, and, as the ferns grow up its legs and pin its claws to its sides, they begin the task they were designed for. 

The water golems are the first to reach it and they force icy rivulets down its throats and nostrils. Water reaches its lungs and burns like fire. It coughs and splutters, gasps only to let more water in. Air pockets batter its heads, stunning it, knocking it this way and that. It howls in terror and pain. The dead leaves, so soft and fragile before they were animated by whatever demon guards this woman’s head, now slice its flesh to ribbons with edges as hard as steel as they spin through the air. 

All of a sudden, the creature’s torment stops. The water recedes, the air is still, the leaves fall lifeless to the ground. It blinks at this sudden reprieve as the golems stand down and retreat, lining up like an honour guard. A few paces ahead of it, a man suddenly appears, not quite facing the creature, as if he was expecting it to be stood somewhere else and can’t be bothered to look round. 

_An apparition, a recording, an afterimage of the one responsible,_ the creature realises. The man stares down the empty air a metre to the creature’s left, his eyes brilliant blue and his hair the same stern grey as the woman the creature came here for. 

“You think I’d let my own sister out into the Silent World without some kind of protection?” the man asks with a sneer, his features cruel. “You think I don’t know her well enough to know she’s vulnerable out here?” 

He barks a short laugh, no humour in it at all. “At least your fate can be a warning to the rest, hmm?” 

With a raised hand he gestures for the golems to continue their work. The creature has just enough time to see his image flicker and fade before the water comes back and the leaves shred it and the stone colossus begins raining hammer blows, smashing its skulls and snuffing it out. 

 

* * *

 

When they find a dead troll just a hair’s breadth from the tank the next morning, Tuuri’s first instinct is to take a lot of pictures of it. Her first troll! She coos over its distorted body and mangled bones, even works up the courage to prod it with a stick to make sure it’s dead as Sigrun yells encouragement and Mikkel demands she tighten the straps on her haz-mask just to be on the safe side. 

She disappears into the tank and emerges a second later with the expedition’s camera, demanding a group photograph. 

_Snap!_ From left to right, Emil grinning hugely, Lalli trying to worm out of the friendly arm Emil’s thrown absent-mindedly round his shoulder, Sigrun looking suitably lethal, Tuuri beaming and clutching the camera’s auto-trigger bulb, Mikkel rolling his eyes and Reynir casting terrified glances at the troll at their feet. The Copenhagen Expedition, on the day when things could have gone so horribly wrong – just how a troll got so close undetected is something Sigrun and Mikkel will review during sleepless nights soon – but didn’t. 

Hundreds of miles away, Onni Hotakainen wakes and feels an odd tug in his chest. He knows what it means. His precautions, incanted and manufactured over sleepless nights of his own as he sat next to Tuuri’s bed and prayed to every god in their pantheon to keep her safe, were not in vain. 

His comrades in Keuruu note that ‘Old Sourface’ seems unusually cheerful at breakfast that morning.


End file.
